The Big Four Tech War

As the Holidays near and the four powerhouses of tech, Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon are fighting for position in the tech wars and holiday season sales.  This is a tech war like none other.

“It’s the biggest, most intense battle in tech history,” said Ted Morgan, chief executive of Skyhook Wireless, a firm that provides location-based technology for mobile devices. “It’s so much bigger than even the Microsoft, Apple, IBM battles of the 1990s.”

Here’s how the four shake out:

Google

• Makes money selling ads that appear alongside its search results.
• Developed the Android software to run on phones built by others, including Motorola, Samsung and HTC.
• Looking to acquire cell phone-maker Motorola Mobility Holdings.
• Recently released Google Music

Apple

• Built success by selling computers, phones and tablets that work seamlessly with the company’s software programs.

• Announced that more than 25 million people have downloaded iOS 5.

• Recently shared iCloud, a brand-new service that lets you store your emails, music files, videos, and more on an Apple-controlled remote server, and access the data from any other device with iCloud support.

As a side note, the passing of Apple’s former CEO Steve Jobs has the entire tech community wondering how his absence will impact the company he co-founded.

“Since Jobs passed on the baton to Tim Cook in late August this year there has been concern among market watchers that an Apple without Steve Jobs at the helm will not be the same. However, some believe the skeptics might be underestimating Apple’s bench strength. “This is something they’ve been planning for and thinking about for a long time,” David Riedel, President and Founder of Riedel Research Group, said.  ”One of the qualities of a good CEO is that he can pick the right people, and Jobs was such CEO, Jeff Ebersits, CIO at Shareholder Value Management.” Source

Facebook

• The baby of the bunch, Facebook is the world’s most popular social network. But founder Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitions are grander – and they run directly into those of the three other Titans.

• Facebook hopes to be an alternative way to organize the Web, a platform for consumers to spend their time online. Instead of using Google’s algorithm to search for news and information, Zuckerberg envisions a future in which people consult their network of friends.

• Most critically, content on Facebook is out of the reach of Google’s search engine. And the more time people spend on Facebook, the less time they are looking at ads on Google, which recently launched Google+ as a rival social network.

• Facebook is beginning to bump into Apple’s business of selling apps on its devices. Zuckerberg’s company has quickly become a powerful player in the booming market for social games, such as the popular FarmVille.

Amazon

• The world’s biggest online retailer.

• Benefiting from growing sales of its Kindle e-book reader and digital media, including books, movies and music, putting it in competition with Apple’s iTunes.

• Like Google – is shifting toward Apple’s territory of making devices. Not only does Amazon have the Kindle, but they recently released the Kindle Fire to rival the iPad.

Happy Birthday Email!

Electronic mail turns 30 years old today. Where would we be without email? Can you remember the very first person you emailed? I know I can’t. Heck, I can’t even remember the last person I emailed. What I do know is I would be lost without it. I will admit I’m no longer a fan of big email campaigns and I now share more things via social networking than I do through email but I still couldn’t start or end my day with out email communication. Here’s a look at how electronic mail got its start.

Amplify’d from thenextweb.com

On August 30th, 1982, 29 years ago, 16-year old V. A. Shiva copyrighted “EMAIL” along with the GUI we still use today with the fields “To: From: Cc: Bcc: Subject: Reply, Reply All, Forward” and Email body and attachment.

“When I first heard the word ‘electronic mail,’ I literally felt it was sending electricity through paper. Those two words juxtaposed together in 1978 were absolutely new,” says Shiva. While many claim to have “invented email” the issue isn’t just one of semantics. With electronic messaging systems in place, Shiva is responsible for having transformed what was known as office mail into the very first email system. “That is what I developed, starting in 1978, as a 14-year old, for which in 1981 I was awarded recognition by the Westinghouse Science Awards for innovation, and in 1982 the First US Copyright for EMAIL,” he writes.

“The guys before me we’re involved in text messaging. Messages sent from one computer to another computer. Before that Tom Van Vleck was the first to send a message within the same computer to another user in the mainframe. Leonard Kleinrock sent a message across two computers on the asme network. Ray Tomlinson sent a message across multiple users across multiple computers. But my concept of email was patently related to office mail. That’s what I built: a database, a networking infrastructure and software programming language for email,” said Shiva to me over a Skype call.

Nearly 30 years later and V. A. Shiva is now teaching a class at MIT called “Systems Visualization,” which is currently oversubscribed. It’s a cross discipline class that enables engineers to connect multiple subsystems.  built to educate MIT engineers on how to do that. The class aims to artistically answer, in drawing form, the design of services and concept. How do you build a health care system? Or how do we visualize human health in today’s advertising driven society? How do you innovate? How is innovation affected by cultural mores?

When asked about the future of email, Shiva thinks it’s here to stay, regardless of the rise of social media and text messaging. “I think email has a very particular purpose and I think it’s going to grow in that…Web mail might decline but devices will still access people’s email communications. Facebook may do some integrated email but fundamentally it will be email.

He writes:

Ironically, even as Zuckerburg declares as some trade journals said, “EMAIL IS DEAD”, he is launching @Facebook as a direct challenge to GMail. He says it will have EMAIL in it, along with other types of “messaging.” Facebook produces billions of EMAIL messages everyday.” Read more at thenextweb.com

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Google+ Week One AKA My New Addiction

I’ve gotten very little sleep over the past few days experimenting with Google+, the new social network just rolled out by Google. Winning where Google Wave failed, I have to say my initial impression of the platform has been very positive. Over the past few days I have been experimenting, observing, commenting, uploading, testing and getting to know this platform. It’s only been week one but my fascination has not waned yet.

For many this will be another thorn in their side as they attempt to learn yet another social network. But for me it was an easy fit. I have a pretty strong presence on Google already so the migration of my public Google profile, Google buzz posts and Picasa photos was rather easy. Look, I recognized long ago that Google was into world domination so I’ve been on board with them for a while.

The next step in Goolge+ was deciding who I wanted to be in my Circle. Circles on Google+ are a grouping of friends, followers and others that you want to interact with online. After deciding who I would add, the next task was deciding what kinds of Circles I wanted. Google+ has allowed me to separate my real “friends” from the rest of the online world I engage with. I found myself coming up with zany titles for my Circles like, “I Don’t Know You But I May Want To” or “Why Am I Following You” to the one that really counts, “My Inner Circle.” Actually, part of the fun is deciding who will goes where.

Finally, the last step was to start engaging with the other early adopters. Similar to Facebook, you can just follow the feed and start commenting on or reposting links from others. The handy +1 button, very similar to the Facebook Like button, allows you to easily share posts. Last but not least, Hangouts blow me away. Think of them as a chat service on steroids. This video chat feature clearly sets Google+ apart from all other social networks. However, there is pressure to look good all day long… you never know who might want to hang out!

My last and final “Like”… is that unlike Facebook and Twitter… I can segregate my posts to the entire public or to a certain group of people. This alone is a win for me. Once I can do multiple posts to Twitter and Facebook (I’m not any where near ready to leave those two sites) and once I have an iPhone and iPad app then I will settle comfortably into Google+ and never leave. In the meantime, Chris Brogan, President of Human Business Works, has summed up the 50 pros for Google+ better than any other posts I’ve read. Check out his post below.

Amplify’d from www.chrisbrogan.com

Google+ is built to take you away from either Facebook or Twitter (or both), and it could do it, in time. If it seems like FriendFeed, and thus you worry it might burn out, know that Newt Gingrich has already joined. With a G+ account, you get unlimited photo storage on Picasa. (Flickr feel threatened? FB photos?) With Circles (how one groups people), you control privacy in a way that makes clear and obvious sense. Your “about” section is rich, robust, allows links, photos, QR codes, and more. M

ur “about” section is rich, robust, allows links, photos, QR codes, and more. Marketers rejoice. If Google+ starts influencing Page Rank (meaning, if a link shared on G+ is weighted more than others), it’s game on for SEO/SEM. If Google Music integrates into this platform the way YouTube is now, it’s a powerful entertainment media platform instantly. The Android integration for G+ is strong already in these early days. If the platform does take off in a big way, this could shift mobile OS choices, and spending. (very speculative, I admit) You don’t need Quora, if you can ask detailed questions in G+ and share them with specific Circles, etc. The live video chat feature is a powerful addition to collaboration and workshifting

etc. The live video chat feature is a powerful addition to collaboration and workshifting scenarios.   “A question to ask yourself is, ‘Should I get in early, before anyone’s there to bother with? If I don’t look at it for a year, will I lose ground? If it’s still early days, why should I bother with Google Plus yet?’” A standalone Google+ Apps version plus Google Docs = a very powerful business collaboration environment that would trump most white label social enterprise tech easily. With G+ seeing our comment streams, their ability to better plot social graphs and integrate AdSense and maybe even Google Affiliate opportunities is huge. (Yes, FB does this, but Google thrives on Adsense.) If Google+ offered a WordPress comment integration, I would give G+ my comments in a heartbeat. That lame +1 button from a few months back now became something rather valuable, if G+ takes off. People keep citing the FB has 600 million, so no one’s going anywhere argument. AOL, anyone? People migrate. It happens. There are more big name visionaries poking around on Google+ right out in the open than on any other social application that I’ve seen (this just might be the nature of G+, that everything is so visible, but it FEELS like big news to have Michael Dell and Mark Zuckerberg and others checking it out.) G+ pushes more use of Gmail. I’ve received 15 non-spam messages in 2 days from my core gmail account, after having had almost zero traffic (nonspam) for 2 years. If Google integrates Calendar into + and makes it like Tungle, then social calendaring gets pretty interesting. Google Buzz, which went nowhere for most folks, now looks like a nice sharing stream in your G+ profile, especially if you share a lot via Google Reader. The photo display interface in Google+ is stunning, adding to my thoughts of this making for an amazing media platform. The moment G+ full-throttle opens up accounts for businesses, you’ll hear big news plays about this platform.   “Would all Google’s efforts in building an OS plus their commanding growth in mobile point to a potential rapid leapfrogging of either Twitter or Facebook? I don’t think so, but Google is wealthy enough to play the long game, and if you think of all these various integrations, this becomes much more interesting to consider.” With Google’s ChromeOS push, plus the proliferation of Android, Google+ now becomes quite a robust integrated communications, media, and sharing layer on multiple platforms natively, plus it is supported by browsers on all other platforms. Hangouts (live multi-user video chats) works with Google Translate to faciliate multi-language instant communication. Neither Skype nor Facetime do that. Google+ is perfectly configured to run social customer service, if only they allowed baked in search capabilities akin to search.twitter.com. It would take relatively little to integrate Google Voice into this stack in a meaningful way to add SMS to this, plus GTalk already does voice and video 1-to-1. I don’t think that Blogger integration would improve G+. WordPress has won that war, though Blogger is still serviceable and people still like it. G+ also won’t replace blogging, such as it is, but not unlike the decline in blogging frequency after Twitter and FB became more popular, G+ makes is really easy to see how you could do the same things inside G+ and maybe get more traction. (Don’t be swayed by the above. Your blog is your own real estate. Blogging inside anyone else’s platform is like renting a hotel room, putting up posters, and thinking it’s your place.) Twitter makes a cleaner “newsroom” feel, but G+ has many more methods to tell and deliver a story. A news Circle in G+ would feel as rich as Flipboard. Oh, I almost forgot: G+ on an Android Tablet is pretty darned good. Advertising integration seems simple and obvious. Commerce integration doesn’t seem that hard, if you squint. “Will the mainstream pick this up the way they did Twitter? Does the fact that the URLs for your account on Google+ are messier mean it’ll lack that simple audible sharing we hear on the radio and on TV?”   If you enable location on your mobile device, G+ creates circles by “nearby,” thus allowing for instant location-centric social networks. If G+ did something special with QR and empowered more location-focused media delivery, then you’d have a powerful media/marketing opportunity right there. G+ could enable some really interesting multi-format publishing if you turn it around: mix audio, video, photo, text, link, and location data into a “package” or a “project,” and you’ve got a powerful digital publishing platform. (See also the last part of the next point.) How long before we see our first Hangout live music “jam?” That’s one record button away from being supercool. And one “name your price” Google Checkout tweak away from being instant micro content for sale. If Google Places integrated with G+ and one were using the mobile/nearby functionality, interesting “migratory” graphs suddenly become a new datapoint for marketers (or researchers, or whatever). The nonprofit tech use implications of Google+ are quite interesting, especially of Google Pages is reimagined for Google+. If I can move a Google Presentation into my stream, then I can share business information in a valuable in-system way. Google+ needs a “sticky” post for streams, so that we can hang a daily status or special update on our stream/profile for the whole day. When Google+ gets off-site sharing and/or bookmarking abilities, plus when it integrates a URL shortener with stats built in, kapow. There are no private message functions built in, but that’s because there’s a “send an email” on everyone’s profile page. This is still clunky. This belies the motivations of Google (let us see it all) versus Facebook/Twitter (you just keep feeling like you’re private, if that helps you!). “Remembering for a moment that Google’s biggest monetary trick is to serve highly targeted ads, what does the Google+ platform do to enhance their data set? Hint: lots!”   The Spark area isn’t that compelling yet, but add user-created materials, plus let us curate that area differently, and we’ll eat out of your hands. If I were Google, I’d buy Alltop and replace Spark with that. If users could add themselves to “public” or “member’s only” circles, Google+ would make the ultimate conference attendee/participant tool, almost as-is. There talk about how some of us are using hashtags inside Google+, even though they don’t function that way. What we’re saying is, “Please let us have tools to create our own folksonomy,” and when Google listens to that, they will see even more interesting social graphs. Ford is already investigating the heck out of Google+. Location data plus Places plus users’ friends data makes for a rich marketing profile, and some really useful tools. Google+ would be the ultimate environment for ethical affiliate marketing, if the concept of “objects” or “things” existed. Meaning, if I could say, “I’m enjoying my new !TDK Boombox! today,” and that use of !! became a link that paid me a few bucks if someone bought a TDK boombox after my recommendation, that would be nifty for some. I saw many early worries from users that marketers would come and ruin things. They’re right to worry. This is a new place to experiment and it will happen. But I’m optimistic. Small Businesses would benefit from an integration of Places, Pages, and Google Plus. That whole social customer service movement? Pow. Done. Easy. The minute I can pump a bunch of saved search RSS feeds into Google+ directly, the sooner Google+ would feel like a listening station mixed with a media making/curating platform all in one platform. The notion of “trending topics” would be exponentially more valuable inside of Google+, depending on how the algorithyms reflected this. Read more at www.chrisbrogan.com

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Sony Hacked… AGAIN!

Hackers may have stolen the personal information of 24.6 million Sony Online Entertainment users, the company said on Monday.

Amplify’d from www.wired.com

Sony Online Entertainment games like DC Universe Online were taken down Monday, after a security breach that exposed 24.6 million Sony users’ accounts and some credit card numbers. Image courtesy Sony Online Entertainment It’s bad news piled on top of bad news for Sony. Hackers may have stolen the personal information of 24.6 million Sony Online Entertainment users, the company said on Monday. More than 20,000 credit card and bank account numbers were also put at risk. This is in addition to the recent leak of over 70 million accounts from Sony’s PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. “We are today advising you that the personal information you provided us in connection with your SOE account may have been stolen in a cyberattack,” Sony wrote in a statement on its website on Monday. Sony Online Entertainment is a division of the company that publishes online multiplayer games like the recently released DC Universe Online. Sony turned off all SOE game services Monday after it learned of the intrusion. Sony said that the compromised personal information includes customers’ names, addresses, e-mail addresses, birth dates, gender, phone numbers, logins and hashed passwords. Also at risk are the credit card numbers and expiration dates of 12,700 non-U.S. customers, plus 10,700 direct debit records from customers in Austria, Germany, Netherlands and Spain, containing bank-account numbers, customers’ names and addresses. This information was stored in what Sony said was an “outdated database from 2007.” Hackers may have had this information for more than two weeks now. The intrusion occurred April 16 and 17, Sony said. Customers first noticed that Sony’s PlayStation Network service was down April 20. After a week of downtime, the company said that hackers had attacked its services and that the personal and credit card information associated with more than 70 million accounts were at risk. At the time, Sony said that the Online Entertainment division had not been affected by the hack and would remain in operation, telling customers that their data was safe to the best of its knowledge. Though both Visa and American Express told Wired.com last week that they had no reason to believe their credit cards had been compromised, several dozen Ars Technica readers reported what they believed to be PSN-connected fraud. The PlayStation Network is still offline, but Sony says it will restore some services later this week, including online multiplayer gaming for PlayStation 3 and PSP. As a goodwill gesture, Sony says it will offer all customers a selection of downloadable content and 30 free days of its premium PlayStation Plus service. As compensation for the Sony Online Entertainment leak, Sony said that it will give all of its customers 30 days of additional subscription time, plus an extra day for each day the servers remain down. Sony did not say when its SOE services would be back online. Read more at www.wired.com

 

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Apple Sends Ripples Through Tech World

According to Wired.com, Apples earnings are “staggering”. They reported “Apple posted March-quarter revenue of $24.67 billion — meaning the company is well on its way toward exceeding $100 billion in sales for the full-year. In the last three months, Apple earned a whopping $5.99 billion. Both the revenue and earnings figures were new records for Apple.”

“With quarterly revenue growth of 83 percent and profit growth of 95 percent, we’re firing on all cylinders,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in a statement. “We will continue to innovate on all fronts throughout the remainder of the year.”

Apple is clearly the one to beat and just in case you are keeping score, below is a look at how some of the other companies are doing in comparison.

Amplify’d from m.apnews.com

NEW YORK (AP) – Consumer technology companies reporting financial results this week are looking like rowboats bobbing in the wake of Apple Inc.’s supertanker.

Close to oblivion in 1997, Apple is now the world’s second-most valuable company, after Exxon Mobil Corp. On April 20, it reported net income of $5.99 billion for the January-to-March period, nearly double that of a year ago. It shipped a record 18.65 million iPhones during the quarter. Its iPad tablet computers are so popular, the company couldn’t make enough.

Apple’s ascendancy has produced many losers and a few winners, as underscored over the past two weeks:

- Microsoft Corp.: loser.

Apple dethroned Microsoft as the world’s most valuable technology company a year ago. In its mid-fall report, it surpassed Microsoft in quarterly revenue. In the January-March period this year, it surpassed Microsoft in net income, too.

On Thursday, Microsoft reported that revenue from the Windows operating system declined for the second straight quarter because people are buying fewer Windows computers.

Some prospective buyers are going to Macs instead – Apple reported that it sold 28 percent more units. Others are going to iPads. Goldman Sachs now believes that more than 30 percent of iPads sold may be replacing PC sales. In the 90s, the trend was the opposite, as Windows PCs were crowding out Macs.

- Nokia Corp.: loser.

Nokia said this week that it will slash 7,000 jobs through layoffs and outsourcing. It still sells more phones than anyone else, but it’s losing share to Apple, especially when it comes to smartphones.

Research firm Strategy Analytics also said revenue from Apple’s iPhone sales surpassed that of Nokia’s phones in the January-to-March period, as iPhones are much more expensive than the average Nokia phone. That makes Apple the world’s largest phone maker by revenue.

To better compete with the iPhone, Nokia is ditching its old Symbian software and adopting Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7. But the transition will take time; the first Windows-powered Nokia phones aren’t expected until late 2011 or early 2012.

- Research In Motion Ltd.: loser.

The maker of the BlackBerry is in a predicament that’s similar to Nokia’s. RIM warned Thursday that net income, revenue and unit sales for the quarter ending in May will come in below its previous forecast.

The company’s high-end phones are looking old compared with the iPhone and ones running Google Inc.’s Android software. They aren’t selling as well as the company expected.

RIM promised investors that new phones with revamped software will bring sales roaring back in the latter half of the year, but investors are skeptical, sending RIM’s stock down Friday.

- HTC Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.: winners, indirectly.

Although all three companies compete with Apple’s iPhone, they are doing well. Unlike Nokia and RIM, the three are betting on Google’s Android system, which comes the closest to mimicking the look, feel and functions of the iPhone.

Motorola Mobility is a shadow of the old Motorola, once the world’s second-largest maker of phones. But its focus on Android-powered smartphones is showing signs of success. It reported on Thursday a near-doubling of smartphone sales in the first quarter.

HTC of Taiwan has been making smartphones for a decade, and sales are really taking off with the help of Android. On Friday, it reported selling 9.7 million in the first quarter.

For South Korea’s Samsung, smartphone sales were a bright spot in the first quarter as overall phone sales declined and other electronics were weak. The company is embroiled in patent litigation with Apple.

- Verizon Wireless: winner.

The No. 1 U.S. cellphone carrier posted a jump in new contract-signing customers – the more profitable kind – after it introduced its version of the iPhone on Feb. 10, which ended AT&T Inc.’s exclusive grip on the device in the U.S.

(Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. of New York and Vodafone Group PLC of Britain.)

- AT&T and Sprint Nextel Corp: mixed.

Verizon’s new subscribers came at the expense of AT&T and Sprint Nextel Corp. But neither carrier saw signs of current customers moving to Verizon for the sake of the iPhone. Rather, it seems customers weighing between carriers were more likely to go to Verizon because of the iPhone.

AT&T appeared to be splitting new iPhone customers evenly with Verizon Wireless. Read more at m.apnews.com

 

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Huffpo Bloggers: Do You Feel Exploited?

A team of researchers from U.C. Santa Barbara’s Carsey-Wolf Center are polling Huffpo bloggers to see how they feel about their free labor. Answer options for that last question include “Bloggers should form a union,” “Bloggers should withhold their labor” and “Bloggers should launch a publicity campaign.” Yes, yes and yes but let’s not hold our breath waiting for it to happen!

Amplify’d from blogs.forbes.com

Is she running a platform or a plantation? That’s for her bloggers to say. Image by Getty Images for AOL via @daylife The Newspaper Guild says the Huffington Post is taking advantage of its unpaid bloggers. Huffpo says its bloggers are only too happy to write for free. What do the bloggers themselves say? With a few exceptions, we haven’t heard much from them. A team of researchers from U.C. Santa Barbara’s Carsey-Wolf Center aims to change that. The researchers are polling Huffpo bloggers under the aegis of the Media Industries Project, which studies trends in media culture with a focus on digital media, globalization and creative labor. “We have been planning this survey from the time we heard about the merger,” says Ryan Fuller, a doctoral candidate working on the study, via email. “The merger provides an opportunity to focus on the conditions of digital labor (e.g., bloggers), and who is responsible for value creation (contributors v. distributors) in the digital environment.” The survey is being conducted independently, without cooperation by Huffpo or AOL. Since researchers had to track down subjects’ email addresses themselves, only a fraction of Huffpo’s 9,000 bloggers are being polled. The questions being asked include: -Do you feel you should receive part of the $315 million AOL used to purchase the Huffington Post? -Do you feel that the Huffington Post’s brand has changed since the merger with AOL? -How would you compare the conditions at the Huffington Post to other sites you have blogged for? -Some have raised concerns about the labor arrangement bloggers have with The Huffington Post. In your opinion, what do you think is the best way for bloggers to address the issue of compensation for digital labor? Answer options for that last question include “Bloggers should form a union,” “Bloggers should withhold their labor” and “Bloggers should launch a publicity campaign.” Fuller says results from the survey will be published in April. Read more at blogs.forbes.com

 

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How Women Really Feel About FB Friends

“Daily deals site Eversave talked to 400 women about their Facebook relationships. The company originally conducted the survey as market research on the social network’s influence on the daily deals ecosystem, but Eversave was surprised to uncover the love/hate relationship between women and their online friends.

For example, the majority of female respondents said they had at least one friend who was a “drama queen” on Facebook. A majority also said they had at least one obnoxiously “proud mother” as a Facebook friend.

Most women — 83% of respondents in this survey — are annoyed at one time or another by the posts from their Facebook connections. For these respondents, the most off-putting post was some kind of whine; a full 63% said complaining from Facebook friends was their number one pet peeve, with political chatter and bragging coming in a distant second and third.

The respondents also said at least one of their Facebook friends tended to:

* Share too many mundane updates too often (65%)
* “Like” too many posts (46%)
* Inappropriately or too frequently use Facebook to promote causes (40%)
* Project false information or images of a perfect life (40%)

Read more from our friends a Mashable.com

Amplify’d from mashable.com

See more at mashable.com

 

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Cellphone use affects brain activity

Holding a cellphone against your ear changes the activity in your brain, according to a new study that shows the brain is sensitive to the phone’s radiation emissions. Hmmmm…. I’m in BIG trouble… UNLESS it changes my brain for the better! How’s that for seeing the glass as half full

Amplify’d from yourlife.usatoday.com

Whether the increased sensitivity is harmless or hurtful to the brain is still up for debate, say researchers from the National Institutes of Health, who found that less than an hour of cellphone use is linked with increased activity in the part of the brain closest to the phone antenna. It’s not clear yet whether the radiation is potentially carcinogenic or has any other negative health implications — or positive ones, for that matter, says lead author Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, about the research in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association. The year-long study on 47 people used positron emission tomography (PET) scans — a technique used to map out the brain. Study subjects underwent two injections with a dye that measures brain glucose metabolism, which is an indication of the brain’s activity. The first time around, cellphones were placed on both sides of the head. In half of the participants, the cellphone against the right ear was turned on with the sound muted for 50 minutes and in the other grooup, neither phone was activated. On the second test, the two groups were switched. None of the participants knew which phone was turned on. The scientists found that metabolism in the brain region closest to the antenna — in the orbitofrontal cortex and temporal pole — was about 7% higher when the cellphone was on. The orbitofrontal cortex of the brain — one of the two areas that lit up on the scans — isn’t linked to a single function, says Murali Doraiswamy, head of biological psychiatry at Duke Medical Center, who wasn’t involved in the study. “It’s broadly associated with emotion, sense of smell, memory, eating, aggression — a whole range of behaviors. It’s like an orchestra conductor instead of just an individual musician with specific task.” Read more at yourlife.usatoday.com

 

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The Broadband Space and Why You Should Care!

It’s hard to imagine a debate that might bore more people to tears than the one the governmental policies over airwave spectrum but it’s a hot topic and one that may ultimately impact you pocketbook. Here’s why…

Amplify’d from www.usatoday.com

Everyone’s starting to realize that the 547 megahertz of spectrum that can be used for mobile broadband isn’t enough to accommodate the burgeoning number of consumers and businesses falling in love with smartphones, tablet computers such as Apple’s iPad, and other wireless communications devices. “If we don’t act, the (wireless) consumer experience will be very frustrating,” Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said in an interview. “The congestion will be very significant.” That means more dropped calls, slower transmission speeds, dead zones — and potentially high prices, with the heaviest mobile service users paying the most. AT&T said this week that it agreed to pay $39 billion for T-Mobile to avoid getting caught in a spectrum crunch. And you’ll probably hear a lot more about airwave policy as the federal government prepares to coax some spectrum from one of the most potent forces in politics: television broadcasters. They collectively control some of the biggest blocks of airwaves but don’t want to lose their ability to transmit video over the air and for free. “This spectrum crunch exists in a few major metropolitan areas,” says National Association of Broadcasters CEO Gordon Smith. “It exists in Los Angeles, and it exists in New York. For someone living in Las Vegas or Kentucky, why should their over-the-air television service be obstructed so you can get a faster download of an app in New York City?” The debate is intensifying, though, because demand for wireless broadband is soaring faster than you can download a movie from Netflix or stream music from Pandora. It will be 60 times greater in 2015 than it was in 2009, Cisco Systems projects. “We have seen over the last four years, on our network alone, mobile broadband traffic has increased by 8,000%,” AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said this week. The company expects that demand to grow as much as 1,000% over the next five years, he adds. A lot of that is because of the growing sophistication of mobile devices. A conventional wireless feature phone might only make it possible to play games or listen to music, in addition to handling voice calls and text messages. A smartphone, though, also enables users to watch videos and listen to turn-by-turn driving directions. The result: A smartphone typically uses 24 times as much spectrum capacity as a regular cellphone. Nearly 66 million people own smartphones now, and that’s growing fast, research firm ComScore reports. And tablets — which provide many of the same features of a smartphone but on a much bigger screen — can use 122 times more spectrum capacity as an ordinary cellphone. More than 82 million people will have a tablet in 2015, up from 10.3 million last year, Forrester Research projects. “It would be nice if we had a warehouse of spectrum that wasn’t being used that we could put on the market to meet this demand,” Genachowski says. “But we don’t.” Wireless broadband goals Still, President Obama pledged in his State of the Union Address in January to do what’s needed to help the country take advantage of the revolution in mobile communications. “Within the next five years,” Obama said, “we will make it possible for business to deploy the next generation of high-speed wireless coverage to 98% of all Americans.” AT&T general counsel Wayne Watts told Wall Street analysts that the company’s proposed deal with T-Mobile would “help to achieve the president’s wireless broadband goal.” The company says that by combining its resources with T-Mobile’s, it could offer wireless high-speed Internet to an additional 46 million people. It remains to be seen whether that argument will resonate at the FCC and Justice Department. The two agencies must decide whether the combination of AT&T and T-Mobile — reducing the number of major wireless carriers to three — would serve the public interest without making mobile services substantially less competitive. In any case, the Obama administration is determined to redeploy spectrum. Last year, the president called on the FCC and the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration to find 300 MHz over five years, and 500 MHz over the next decade, for mobile and fixed broadband services. That would be about 25 times the spectrum devoted to FM radio. The agencies are studying how spectrum is being used to see where it can be reassigned. For example, some might come from frequencies controlled by the government or from implementing technologies that would enable current services to be handled in less airspace. But the FCC hopes to kick-start its effort by securing 120 MHz from television stations. The agency wants some stations to voluntarily give up their spectrum in return for a share of the proceeds when the frequencies are auctioned. The hope is that this deal would appeal to many marginal TV stations, including those that feature home shopping or religious programming. They might lose only a few viewers if they become pay-TV services, the thinking goes: About 90% of viewers subscribe to cable or satellite TV, which offer local broadcast programming in addition to pay-TV channels such as CNN, USA and ESPN. “It’s a win-win approach,” Genachowski says. “It frees up spectrum fast. … And it’s a win for broadcasters, who would get fair compensation for getting out of the business, or going to cable only, or sharing spectrum with another broadcaster in the market.” Although two stations can co-exist on one channel, they might not both be able to offer the best high-definition signals or, potentially, 3-D TV. Read more at www.usatoday.com

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Twitter Targets Small, Medium Businesses with New Ad Platform

Twitter is looking to make more money. Are you a business owner? If so, this is where you come in.

Amplify’d from www.mediabistro.com

Twitter needs to make some money this year. As eMarketer predicts, Twitter will make $150 million in advertising revenue this year – and the company is doing everything they can to get there. While most of us have seen Promoted Tweets from big name companies like Coca-Cola, Dell and Ford, Twitter is shifting gears a bit and starting to focus on small- and medium-sized businesses for its advertising products. Twitter’s upcoming self-serve advertising dashboard (the beta version of which has been leaked) is aimed towards small and medium businesses looking to expand their marketing efforts. As the Wall Street Journal reports, those beta testers already trying out the dashboard are seeing some pretty significant successes. David Szetela, owner of an online-ad agency Clix Marketing, reportedly saw hundreds of pre-orders of his client Guy Kawasaki’s new book “Enchantment” through ads on Twitter. The ads reportedly cost more than $4,000, but he spent less money on Twitter than on Facebook or Google overall, and saw more pre-orders. It makes sense that Twitter would start with big businesses like Coca-Cola as founding beta testers of its advertising program. These companies have the capital to risk on an unproven marketing plan. But it’s time now to woo the small- and medium-sized businesses, which make up a significant portion of online advertising sales outside of Twitter. If the company can get these businesses on board, they’ll likely meet or exceed the $150 million in advertising revenue that eMarketer predicts. Twitter is being valued at over $4 billion now with the recent interest from JPMorgan looking to own 10% of the company for a $450 million investment from its social media fund. The company will have to seriously step up its advertising offerings to small- and medium-sized businesses if it wants to maintain this valuation throughout 2011 and exceed it in the coming years.

See more at www.mediabistro.com

 

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